


Maybe this wasn't going to work

by karvolf



Category: Death Machine (1994)
Genre: Angst by the truckload, Gen, aroace Yutani, feeling are hard, in which Raimi is kind of insensitive but mostly just confused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 17:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11318202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karvolf/pseuds/karvolf
Summary: Raimi and Weyland are determined to help their friend get a date. They mean well, really. Yutani doesn't know how to feel about it though.





	Maybe this wasn't going to work

**Author's Note:**

> Aroace Yutani is my favorite headcanon, so i finally kicked myself and wrote a thing about it! Mostly just some word vomit, with me trying to figure out how he'd feel about it. Some of it it me projecting a lot, but not ALL of it, thank god.

“Ellie said you were rude to her the entire evening! Even if she turned out not to be your type you at least could’ve been nice. She said you barely even _looked_ at her, man.”

Raimi glared at Yutani and stood in front of him, fists clenched and brow furrowed, desperate to get a proper explanation. Sitting in his old bean bag chair, his hands clutching a videogame controller, Yutani tensed. He had no explanation to offer, nothing that would help Raimi understand. If he did, he would not have felt so confused and shaken himself.

“I don’t know what happened,” he muttered. “I panicked and didn’t know what to say, okay? I felt weird and… I don’t know. It felt all wrong.”

As patient as Raimi could be most of the time, clearly this answer didn’t satisfy him. Yutani could not blame him; the whole situation truly was a mess. He just wished Raimi would realize he was just as saddened about the whole thing as he was.

This had been his fourth attempt at dating, and the girl had been nice enough. She was one of Raimi’s friends and exactly the type of girl Raimi liked: bold, talkative and spunky, with a good sense of humor and a couple of Humanist Alliance badges on her bag. When she and Yutani had met, she had grinned and complimented him on his tattoo. She was, just as Raimi had told him, very pretty; with dark skin and long dreads that fell on her shoulders, and bright eyes that were sharp with intelligence.

He would have liked to be her friend, and it would have been nice to spend more time with her in different circumstances, circumstances that were not a weird date in a restaurant he didn’t like. Raimi had told Yutani how excited she was to meet him, and that she hadn’t had a boyfriend in awhile, and how sure he was that they were going to get along great. Nothing about situation should have been stressful. This should have been easy, according to Raimi, but somehow it wasn’t.

After four dates with four different people, Yutani felt like he had only achieved one thing: making each date worse than the one that had preceded it. Well, this _and_ making things awkward for Raimi and Weyland, since each of his dates had been a friend of theirs Yutani had not been familiar with.

Ellie had been nice and charming and obviously interested at first, but this interest had only made Yutani more uncomfortable. She had expectations, and when he tried to figure out how he felt about her he found he did not know what to think or what to say. He liked her well enough, but had been unable to stop worrying that he did not like her the way she wanted to be liked.

Yutani sighed and rubbed his temples, avoiding to look at Raimi. His thoughts were all over the place, and one of his best friends being frustrated with him did nothing to help him feel better.

“It really wasn’t her fault,” he said. “I’ll apologize to her, I swear.”

Raimi crossed his arms and frowned, and he did not need to say it for Yutani to understand that he was losing patience.

“Sounds like you didn’t even give her a chance. You’re the one who agreed to go on a date with her!”

Sitting in silence for a moment, Yutani furrowed his brow, failing to find the words to explain. He felt scared, and trapped, and lost, and now he could not shake the impression that no matter how hard he tried to explain, Raimi would not understand. Because romance always came easily to Raimi, and as far as he remembered Yutani had always heard him talk about crushes. Raimi loved people, and he especially loved being in love. He liked romance and he liked to flirt, he liked the intimacy and the sex. When Yutani tried to imagine what this would feel like, he found himself unable to. It all felt alien and scary, like something was missing and he could not figure out what it was.

This entire situation was a mess and he did not understand why, let alone what to do about it.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Yutani muttered without looking at his friend. “It should’ve worked, but it didn’t. My fault.”

Giving up, Raimi rolled his eyes, annoyance still visible on his face and he walked out of the bedroom.

“You better tell that to Ellie, she’s pretty upset. You didn’t have to be such a fucking weirdo about this, even if you didn’t like her.”

As he looked up to watch him go, Yutani set his videogame controller aside and curled up in the old beanbag chair, hugging his knees. He kept staring at the doorway even after Raimi had disappeared from view, his words echoing in Yutani’s mind. “Weirdo” was such a non-insult, a word that Yutani had heard directed at him plenty of times before without ever giving it a single thought, and yet hearing Raimi say it still hurt. Raimi had not meant it as an insult, Yutani was sure of it, but it had sounded like one.

Maybe all he needed was to let out some steam, Yutani decided. Do some exercise. Then his thoughts would seem less complicated; it would be easier to decide what to do and figure out why everything seemed so scary and confusing right now. He got up from the chair, satisfied with his plan, grabbed his running shoes and went outside.

He ran like hell.

When Yutani came back home several hours later, the street in front of the old apartment were only lit by the greasy, yellow light of the street lamps. He collapsed on his chair, shaking with exhaustion and breathing hard, almost dehydrated but too tired to even get up to have a glass of water, and closed his eyes. He felt just as lost as before.


End file.
